sweets

I love breakfast more than any other meal of the day. We’ve been over this before, right? I tend to get pretty protective of my mornings, especially slow and lazy weekend mornings when Joe and I can watch the morning news and drink a pot of coffee together and eat breakfast with the sun shining through our big picture window. Although I love waking up early, even on the weekends, I don’t like to be rushed into action first thing in the morning. I’m all about having a little time to wake up and settle into the day.

If you’ve eaten dinner at my house any time in the last year and a half, the chances are pretty good that I’ve served you berry cobbler for dessert. This recipe from Sprouted Kitchen is one of my absolute favorite recipes because it’s easy, slightly healthier than a traditional cobbler and I always have the ingredients on hand. Usually I use frozen mixed berries in place of the blueberries and whatever Greek yogurt we happen to have in the fridge.

The other day I found myself thinking about that dessert and how fun it would be to have berry cobbler for breakfast. Since the base of any fruit dessert is, well, fruit, I figured it couldn’t be that hard to make a slightly indulgent yet totally breakfast-acceptable dish. And you know what? I was right.

This Berry Breakfast Cobbler is going into regular rotation at our house, I can just feel it now. It’s perfect for breakfast, but Joe and I have also been eating it after dinner as a healthier way to ward off that need for something sweet at the end of the day. It’s packed with antioxidants from the berries and whole grains from the flour and oats, which add a hearty, earthy taste and texture in the best possible way.

Although I’m not one to typically use a lot of low-calorie sweeteners in my baking, I did sweeten the berry mixture with stevia instead of sugar to keep the calories in check and prevent this dish from becoming a morning sugar bomb in disguise. If you don’t want to use stevia, I would suggest swapping 1/2 cup of granulated sugar for the stevia in this recipe. I’m sure it would be every bit (if not more) delightful.

In a medium mixing bowl, combine the flour, oats, brown sugar and baking powder together until well-combined. Work the butter into the flour mixture with your hands until the butter is in very small pieces and mixture resembles a coarse meal. Add in the Greek yogurt and stir until just combined (mixture will be lumpy.) Set aside.

I mentioned on Instagram this past weekend that I had a great small-batch chocolate chip recipe for you. Since a lot of you mentioned you were excited about the recipe, I figured it’s best not to keep you waiting any longer than necessary. Over the years there have been many times when I want just a little something sweet. I don’t want to bake two dozen chocolate chip cookies because of the time and hassle and amount of ingredients required, so this weekend I took one of my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipes and scaled it down to make only 4 cookies instead of a dozen or two.

The recipe is an almond flour based cookie that doesn’t contain any “specialty” ingredients, like starches or specialty flours, just a little almond meal and some basic cookie ingredients like butter, sugar and chocolate chips. Since the cookies are made with almond meal they have a slightly different texture than a cookie made with all-purpose flour, but I can assure you they are still very soft, chewy and totally delicious.

Next time you’re looking for an easy little recipe that makes just a few cookies to satisfy a craving, I would highly suggest these little gems. And in case you’re interested, I’ve also included nutritional information in the recipe heatnote. These aren’t exactly “diet” cookies, but the clean ingredient list can make you feel good about eating a cookie, or two. I promise I won’t tell anyone.

First off, thank you so much for your kind words about our recent miscarriage. I plan on responding to each and every comment and have done my best to stay up-to-date with e-mails. I so greatly appreciate each word you’ve said to me and cherish each one. This post, a baby shower for my friend Stephanie, was planned months ago. Although the timing feels a bit forced in light of our recent news, I want to be able to celebrate with Stephanie in her time of joy. -Madison

One of my blogging friends turned real life friend, Stephanie of Girl Versus Dough, is having a little baby girl and today I’m getting together with a bunch of other bloggers to throw Stephanie a virtual baby shower. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to attend Stephanie’s real-life baby shower since I was out of town but I wouldn’t miss getting in on the virtual celebrations!

It’s been so great getting to know Stephanie in real life now that we both live up in the cities. She is, without a doubt, one of the sweetest people I know and that little girl is going to be born into such an amazing family!

The cookies I made for Stephanie’s shower are my new go-to sugar cookie recipe. I love baking that doesn’t require a lot of fuss and these cookies certainly fit the bill. One of the things I hate most about sugar cookie dough is the fact that you have to refrigerate the dough before you bake it. I struggle with patience, so refrigerating dough is a challenge for me.

Thankfully, this recipe doesn’t require the dough to be refrigerated before you bake it. Major win in my book! And it requires just a handful of ingredients you probably have on hand, which is another major bonus. For those of you out there who don’t consider yourself much of a baker, I would suggest starting with a recipe like this. Adding a few colored sprinkles on top gives these cookies a decorative touch without much extra fuss.

This sugar cookies come together quickly and don't need to be refrigerated before you slice and bake them. That's a major win in my book! This makes about two dozen small cookies, but feel free to double if you want a bigger batch!

Ingredients

1 cup butter (2 sticks), softened

¾ cup sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

½ teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons baking powder

2½ cups all-purpose flour

Colored sprinkles, if desired

Instructions

Heat oven to 350°F. Spray a large cookie sheet with cooking spray. Set aside.

In bowl of an electric mixer, cream together butter and sugar until fluffy, about 1 to 2 minutes. Add egg and beat until just combined. Add in the vanilla, salt and baking powder and beat until combined.

Add flour to butter mixture and beat until just combined. Transfer dough to floured work surface. Roll dough to ¼ inch thickness. Use cookie cutter to cut shapes from dough, rolling and re-rolling as necessary to use up dough. Top dough with colored sprinkles, if desired.

Place cookies on baking sheet, about 1 inch apart. Bake 8 minutes or just until light golden brown around the edges. Do not over bake. Remove immediately and transfer to wire rack to cool completely.

How was your weekend, friends? Joe and I soaked up every ounce of the beautiful weather we had this weekend, and for the first time it felt like Spring really is on its way! We also finally got around to buying bikes! It’s been a long time coming, since my last bike was something purchased in middle school. Since Minneapolis has so many beautiful bike trails, we knew we were missing out.

Moving right along…Let’s talk about pie, shall we?

At our house, healthier desserts will always have a place at the table. I have found over the years that the less sugar I eat, the less I’m able to tolerate super sweet things. That’s not to say that my sweet tooth has disappeared completely. In reality, I find that I need to have a little something sweet every night.

One of my favorite desserts is peanut butter pie. It’s also a dessert that I don’t indulge in frequently because it’s usually quite unhealthy and loaded with fat and sugar. This weekend when the craving for peanut butter pie hit me hard I decided to come up with a healthier version that I could enjoy more often.

One of my favorite tricks for making healthy creamy pies is to use silken firm tofu for the base of the pie. Make sure that the tofu you buy is silken firm and not another type of tofu or you won’t be able to blend the tofu as smooth as it needs to be for this recipe. If you’re freaked out about using tofu in your pie, don’t be! I promise you can’t even taste the tofu, and it’s a great alternative to cream cheese or whipping cream.

Each slice of this pie clocks in at around 175 calories per slice, meaning you can have a piece every night of the week without feeling guilty in the least bit. An added bonus of the tofu? It means that each slice of this pie has 8 grams of protein!

One final note: The vanilla pudding and pie filling is really important for this recipe. It thickens the filling slightly and really gives the filling lots of great vanilla flavor. Although I’ve only tried this recipe with vanilla, I’m guessing that chocolate, white chocolate, cheesecake or banana flavors would all be really delicious!

This peanut butter pie is a healthier version of one of my favorite desserts. A slice of this pie comes in at around 175 calories per slice, and thanks to a secret ingredient (tofu!) each slice contains 8 grams of protein, too.

Meanwhile, in the bowl of a food processor, combine all the filling ingredients. Blend 2 to 3 minutes, scraping down the sides of the bowl as necessary, until smooth or nearly smooth. If you used chunky peanut butter, like I did, the mixture will not be completely smooth.

By the time Friday rolls around, Joe and I are both in the mood for a low key night, which means a workout together at the gym, eating Chipotle and watching something on TV. Maybe not the most exciting routine around, but I love it so much. Last week when were were watching Shark Tank on ABC, one of our favorite shows, I was drawn to a particular business idea that was being pitched to the sharks on the show. The company, Cookie Dough Cafe, was talking about their line of edible raw cookie dough in a jar. Um, yum!

Although I loved the business idea, one thing that struck me as strange was the fact that they went on and on about the fact that this product was safe because it didn’t contain eggs, meaning no risk of salmonella. However, they didn’t say a thing about the flour that was being used in the cookie dough. What a lot of people don’t know is that eggs aren’t the only source of contamination and that raw flour can also pose a risk of E. coli. I’m assuming that the ladies who own The Cookie Dough Cafe have this figured out and are just not mentioning it, but I thought that I would talk about it briefly. Better safe than sorry, right?

Well, friends, be prepared to have your world rocked by this recipe. If it’s not one of the best recipes to date on E&C, I don’t know what is. To make this Raw Sugar Cookie Dough in a Jar, you start by toasting your flour on a baking sheet in the oven. Doing so makes it safe to use your flour in any manner of raw forms, including this recipe. It takes about 10 minutes and doesn’t impact the taste but will give you peace of mind when serving this treat to your friends, kiddos and when you eat it yourself.

This recipe makes a small batch of cookie dough, about a cup. It’s just enough to keep in the fridge when the craving strikes but not too much that you’ll make yourself sick eating a huge batch at one time. I would suggest, for the sake of your stomach and your waistline, to stick to a spoonful of this magical mixture, then return it to the fridge for safe keeping. For someone who always has to end the night on something sweet, this has proven to be the perfect solution!